The AASHTO Task Force is pleased to announce the release of AASHTOWare Bridge Management 5.2.3. This version incorporates many new improvements and features to our premier bridge management software. 5.2.3 is the culmination of the 5.2 solicitation, enabling all agencies to be fully MAP-21 compliant. All active licensees can download the software electronically from our secure FTP site or request a DVD be mailed out to them. Please contact us at BrM@bentley.com to request the electronic download or DVD.

What’s New

User Interface and New Forms Designer BrM 5.2.3’s user interface has been updated and modernized. The fundamental structure remains the same, however agencies will see some restyling and simple re-organization. A new ‘visual forms editor’ function has been added to the software that will allow agencies a simpler and easier to use form builder.

User Manual BrM 5.2.3’s user manual has been entirely re-done from the ground-up. It is integrated into the product via the help icon on the top right corner, and as separate stand-alone PDF. The stand-alone PDF also includes walkthroughs as appendices.

Tunnels/Multi-Asset Framework BrM 5.2.3 has expanded its framework to begin to allow multiple asset types to be implemented. The first iteration of this will be the introduction of Tunnels. BrM 5.2.3 now includes a Tunnels module, that includes the following various components:

Project/Program Analysis BrM 5.2.3 builds upon the project and programming efforts put into 5.2.2. While agencies will continue to be able to manually create a project and program, 5.2.3 allows an agency to define desired goals for a program, and BrM will create and optimize a program based off those goals. The notable modules that 5.2.3 adds to allow agencies to define and view these goals and their results are:

The Task Force has reviewed the hard work of the Testing TAG, as well as the results of their own testing, and approved 25 enhancements to be included in the software. This will require additional development as well as another round of Beta Testing. By shortening the Release Candidate testing (when the Testing TAG takes the product home to test in their own environments), the additional development should not impact the release by more than a month. We will keep you updated with any changes.

asked 16 questions (which could turn into bugs or enhancements in future)

The Task Force will now consider the list of proposed enhancements. Many of them can be incorporated without affecting the schedule. But some will be larger changes to the software, which will affect the schedule. For now, the release schedule remains the same.

The following Task Force product update is provided to keep all AASHTOWare Bridge Management (BrM) Software users apprised of recent activity related to the development of the software. The Task Force is committed to providing these quarterly updates to help improve communication between the Task Force and those interested in the product. The Task Force met in Boston, MA in April for our spring meeting. The following is a summary of the meeting.

Bridge Management 5.2.1 SP3

An additional service pack for AASHTOWare Bridge Management 5.2.1 has been released by the AASHTOWare Bridge Task Force. This version is a comprehensive service pack release, including all updates and revisions from previous full releases and service packs. It is a separate, full-installation package that will replace any previous version that you may have installed.

The following items will be addressed by the service pack:

All previous versions of the software stored ampersands ( & ) as “&amp;” and apostrophes ( ‘ ) as “&#39;” in the database. Service Pack 3 properly stores and displays symbols such as ampersands as ( & ) and apostrophes as ( ‘ ) in both the database and in the software.

A small potential security exploit has been patched and closed.

Users with a significant number of elements tied to a single bridge have reported a page loading issue with the Inspection tab. These issues are remedied in Service Pack 3.

All active licensees can download the software electronically from our secure FTP site or request a DVD be mailed out to them. Please contact us at brm@bentley.com to request the electronic download or DVD. Any further questions, concerns, or problems can be addressed by emailing Bentley at brm@bentley.com, or directly through JIRA at https://bridgeware.atlassian.net/.

Bridge Management 5.2.2

AASHTOWare BrM 5.2.2 is currently in beta testing. The Enterprise and Workstation versions of the software are being tested against both SQL and Oracle databases to thoroughly vet the release.

The upcoming BrM 5.2.2 release will include a significant change to the way that your data is stored in the software database. This is being done to standardize and simplify the database structure. Agencies that have customized their software based off of keys in the database will need to modify their customizations to instead use GUIDs.

Depending on the amount of customizations made to your software installation, migrating to support this change in BrM 5.2.2 may be a significant effort. Agencies have the ability to continue to use keys, however, legacy tables (COLUMNS) will no longer be supported.

Although a specific release date has not been identified, the release of BrM 5.2.2 is still scheduled for summer 2015.

Bridge Management 5.2.3

The work plan for BrM 5.2.3 has been officially approved. Requirements for the various enhancements to the software are being gathered by the TRTs and Functional Design Specification documents are being crafted from those requirements.

User Group Priorities

The action items that were identified by the User Group at the last User Group meeting have been reviewed and updated by the Task Force. To view these updates, please click here to download a PDF version of the document.

Bug Policy

A formal bug policy has been created to provide clear definitions of issue types, priorities, and appropriate issue response protocols for issues logged in the AASHTOWare BrM Issue Management tool, JIRA. To download a PDF version of this document please click here.

Contact Support

The support team at Bentley is available to assist you with any questions, comments or concerns that you may have pertaining to the AASHTOWare Bridge Management software. They are available via the following methods:

An additional service pack for AASHTOWare Bridge Management 5.2.1 is being released by the AASHTOWare Bridge Task Force. This version is a comprehensive service pack release, including all updates and revisions from previous full releases and service packs. It is a separate, full-installation package that will replace any previous version that you may have installed. An additional service pack for Bridge Management 5.2.1 is being released to address the following:

All previous versions of the software stored ampersands ( & ) as “&” and apostrophes ( ‘ ) as “&#39:” in the database. Service Pack 3 properly stores and displays symbols such as ampersands as ( & ) and apostrophes as ( ‘ ) in both the database and in the software.A small potential security exploit has been patched and closed.Users with a significant number of structure units and elements tied to a single bridge have reported a page loading issue with the Inspection tab. These issues are remedied in Service Pack 3.

All active licensees can download the software electronically from our secure FTP site or request a DVD be mailed out to them. Please contact us at brm@bentley.com to request the electronic download or DVD. Any further questions, concerns, or problems can be addressed by emailing Bentley at brm@bentley.com, or directly through JIRA at https://bridgeware.atlassian.net/.

The following Task Force product update is provided to keep all AASHTOWare Bridge Management (BrM) Software users apprised of recent activity related to the development of the software. The Task Force is committed to providing these quarterly updates to help improve communication between the Task Force and those interested in the product. The Task Force met in Jackson Hole, WY in January for our winter meeting. The following is a summary of the meeting.

Bridge Management 5.2.1

AASHTOWare BrM 5.2.1 SP2 64-Bit release is now available.

The 64-Bit version of the software has shown to alleviate memory utilization issues reported by some agencies.

This release also supports element data submittal to FHWA.

To obtain this release please sent an email to BrM@Bentley.com and a member of the team will provide you download instructions.

Bridge Management 5.2.2

The development of the following features for the BrM 5.2.2 release are now complete:

Deterioration Model Implementation

Project Planning and Analysis Module

Metric to English Measurement Conversion

Application Programming Interface (API)

Database GUID Conversion

AASHTOWare BrM 5.2.2 is almost ready for beta testing. Members of the Testing TAG are meeting on February 17-19 to aggressively test the software in preparation for release. The Enterprise and Workstation versions of the software will be tested against both SQL and Oracle databases to thoroughly vet the release.

Bridge Management 5.2.3

The work plan for BrM 5.2.3 was finalized in January. Requirements for the various enhancements to the software are being gathered by the TRTs and Functional Design Specification documents are being crafted from those requirements.

AASHTOWareBridge.com FAQs

The AASHTOWareBridge.com website continues to receive updates to the frequently asked questions page. Should you have any suggestions for additions to the FAQ section, or the site in general, please send an email to BrM@Bentley.com.

User Group Priorities

The latest status updates of priorities identified at the last User Group meeting can be found here.

The AASHTOWare Bridge Task Force is pleased to announce the release of AASHTOWare Bridge Management 5.2.1 SP2. This version is a comprehensive service pack release, including all updates and revisions from previous full releases and service packs. It is a separate, full-installation package that will replace any previous version that you may have installed.

5.2.1 SP2 fully incorporates the FHWA Bridge Element validation checks and file submittal for the April 2015 submission, and has been extensively tested against the FHWA validation checking website. SP2 also includes an upgrade to Crystal Reports 2013, and AASHTO will provide a single Crystal Reports license key free for a licensed agency to use. If you would like to receive your agency’s license key, please email Bentley at BrM@bentley.com.

The enterprise version of SP2 has been upgraded to be 64 bit compatible, which will provide some minor speed improvements, but most noticeably an increased level of stability for agencies that have a significant number of concurrent users in BrM. There is a 32 bit version of SP2 Enterprise that is available upon agency request, however we would encourage all agencies to use the 64 bit version whenever possible. The workstation version of SP2 is still installed as a 32 bit application, however all functionality is mirrored between the enterprise and workstation versions.

All active licensees can download the software electronically from our secure FTP site or request a DVD be mailed out to them. Please contact us at BrM@bentley.com to request the electronic download or DVD.

The following are the highlights of the new features of AASHTOWare Bridge Management 5.2.1 SP2:

FHWA Bridge Element submission and validation checks

Upgrade to the latest version of Crystal Reports (2013)

Enterprise version of SP2 has been upgraded to be 64 bit compatible

Specific TAG identified upgrades, enhancements, and stabilizations to the product

**There are several known potential issues that are outside the control of the BrM product and installation within the SP2 release:

If you have a version of Oracle prior to 11GR2 version 4, there is a known 64 bit ODBC Oracle bug. You will likely *not* be able to login to the BrM application, until you have it patched. Depending on which specific version of Oracle you have, the Oracle patchset is different. Please email Bentley at BrM@bentley.com for any questions.

Please ensure that your web server ODBC driver matches your Oracle version (e.g. 11GR2 ODBC driver connecting to a 11GR2 database). You may not be able to login if these do not match, your may notice sporadic issues in various aspects of the software.

The new Crystal Reports 2013 runtime should install correctly, however if you notice ‘log4net’ errors when you try to run a Crystal Report, you will need to install the runtimes separately. Please email Bentley at BrM@bentley.com and the contractor can walk you through the process.

When attempting to add multiple work candidates to a bridge in rapid succession, you will notice an error. To work around this known issue… after you create a work candidate, you will simply need to select another work candidate from the grid, prior to creating another. (this errorhas been fixed and addressed in 5.2.2).